Products such as grain, animal feed (barley, corn, wheat, and animal products), cereal or other particulate materials are normally converted from bulk material into smaller portions for sale. Additionally, further processing of this bulk material is often required in order to have a saleable product. For example, animal feed may be coated with hormones (to enhance growth), fat (to enhance weight gain), vitamins (to maintain animal health) and antibiotics (to prevent disease). Another example of a bulk material which requires further processing is cereal for human consumption to which sugar, fruit, vitamins, or other grains are added. Also, granular plastic feedstock to extruders needs to be blended with color chips to give the proper color to the extruded product. These types of bulk materials are typically transported via conveyor or into a hopper for further processing. Inherent in the processing of bulk particulate material is that it is subject to irregular flow which, when subjected to further processing, results in the production of an uneven finished product. Variations can be on the order of twenty percent (20%) to as much as fifty percent (50%). While such variations are not a serious problem when large volumes of product are produced, over smaller volumes, such a wide variation results in a product that is not acceptable. For example, when hog feed is coated with growth hormones, and where the quantity of hormone ingested by hogs is necessary in order to meet a contracted sale weight, the variation in the coating means that there will be variations in how much growth hormone is ingested by hogs within the group, and therefore results in underweight animals. To overcome the under-ingestion of the hormones, more feed must be fed to the animals in order for them to reach the contracted sale weight, thus reducing producer profitability.
In view of the foregoing, it is an object of the present invention to provide a system that overcomes the disadvantages of the current production methods and systems.
It is a further object to provide a system that converts an irregularly flowing stream of particulates into a continuously flowing stream of particulates.
Another object of the present invention is to provide a method and apparatus for effectively coating a continuously flowing stream of particulates with the correct amount of said coating.
Yet another object of the present invention is to continuously measure the mass of the continuous flow stream and to integrate this information with other processes to produce a finished product within the preselected specifications.